Children Of Oedipus And Other Essays On The Imitation Of Greek Tragedy 1550 1800

The heroic Greek dramas that have moved theatergoers and readers since the fifth century B.C. Towering over the rest of Greek tragedy, the three plays that tell the story of the fated Theban royal family—Antigone, Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus—are among the most enduring and timeless dramas ever written. Robert Fagles's authoritative and acclaimed translation conveys all of Sophocles's lucidity and power: the cut and thrust of his dialogue, his ironic edge, the surge and majesty of his choruses and, above all, the agonies and triumphs of his characters. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction and notes by the renowned classicist Bernard Knox. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Surveys important Greek and Roman authors, plays, characters, genres, historical figures and more.

An illustrated introduction to ancient Greek tragedy, written by one of its most distinguished experts, which provides all the background information necessary for understanding the context and content of the dramas. A special feature is an individual essay on every one of the surviving 33 plays.

"The book argues that rediscovered ancient Greek plays exerted a powerful and uncharted influence on sixteenth-century England's dramatic landscape, not only in academic and aristocratic settings, but also at the heart of the developing commercial theaters."--Introduction, p. 2.

As a creative medium, ancient Greek tragedy has had an extraordinarily wide influence: many of the surviving plays are still part of the theatrical repertoire, and texts like Agamemnon, Antigone, and Medea have had a profound effect on Western culture. This Companion is not a conventional introductory textbook but an attempt, by seven distinguished scholars, to present the familiar corpus in the context of modern reading, criticism, and performance of Greek tragedy. There are three main emphases: on tragedy as an institution in the civic life of ancient Athens, on a range of different critical interpretations arising from fresh readings of the texts, and on changing patterns of reception, adaptation, and performance from antiquity to the present. Each chapter can be read independently, but each is linked with the others, and most examples are drawn from the same selection of plays.

The two volumes of essays and translations of the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides are the accumulation of some twelve years’ of producing ancient plays for contemporary audiences and actors. The play-texts themselves, therefore, are intended to be accessible and speakable, in the first instance, and to convey as much of the flavour of the original Greek as any translation is able. They are there to be used. The style, though personal to a degree, is an attempt to maintain the tone and the poetry of tragedy, without dropping into the mock-archaic or turning the texts into self-conscious homilies on contemporary ‘issues.’ The introductory essays are occasional pieces written with production in mind. Two general themes have emerged: firstly, a development of ideas about the nature of the dramatic genre (and dramatic writing) and stage rhetoric – how is irony achieved? What kinds of irony are there? How do we understand emotional experience in a theatre? Secondly, the significance of emotions and the concept of tragedy in the Greek context; Sophocles and Euripides share, as one might expect, a milieu and some rigid theatrical conventions, but within this context they reveal significant differences in terms of dramatic style and audience orientation. The translations and essays are not presented in the order that they were written. Volume I follows the narrative order of Sophocles’ ‘Theban Trilogy’, and Volume II the chronological order of Euripides’ composition. The plays were all produced in Dunedin, New Zealand, in the following order: Oedipus the King 1994 (and 2003); Hippolytus 1995; Bacchae 1997; Antigone 1998; Oedipus at Colonus 2000; Medea 2002; Hecuba 2006.